[email protected]

Hello,

We all made it through yesterday with little fuss. The fussing that started in
the am, probably a result of my own fussing, ended. I shared a few tears with
Tim. Ashley had a blast. Turns out about 2 other non-family families hung out
with the party too, with siblings. I'll try not to take it personally. My
little ones were bummed, but not so terribly this time. Maturity, I guess.
Hardened from the previous years. What gets me so much is the Birthday Girl
really doesn't care one way or the other if we come. Her mom is the one who
decides who comes, controlling the situation. This is why I call it a game.
It's a game of exclusion and its played often here from this family.Riley is
the one who gets excluded the most. You can come inside today, but he can
not... So really it is no surprise that every year someone does not get to
come. Power, plane and simple.

Has anyone read about the forms of girl aggression? My hubby told me about a
book which addresses this issue and it turns out that girls/women are
aggressive by excluding. If you know the author, let my know.

Mary H.

Happily on the other side of this party.

tessimal <[email protected]>

--- In [email protected], <maryfhickman@j...> wrote:
<>Her mom is the one who decides who comes, controlling the
situation. This is why I call it a game. It's a game of exclusion
and its played often here from this family.Riley is the one who gets
excluded the most. You can come inside today, but he can not... So
really it is no surprise that every year someone does not get to
come. Power, plane and simple.<>

Mary:

I guess when it comes to birthday parties I have to say up front that
I feel it is up to the birthday child and their parents to decide who
does or does not come. The parents foot the bill and either risk
their home and whatever damage is done, or must organize a suitable
party venue at their expense. So the decision isn't solely up to the
child. And children are learning to make decisions, too, not out of
exclusion, but just time, space, and economic factors.

My daughter loves birthday celebrations and every year she plans
something very special. We are very low income so this is a big deal
for her. We always look for the best bargains we can find, but ones
that will be memorable.

When my daughter was 8 she had 8 friends visit the local children's
museum to run and play, then home for outdoor games and activities
and a cookout, then spend the night in a big tent in our yard, then
a "champagne" breakfast (sparkling cider). She made all the choices
along the way. The decision to camp out helped determine how many
kids could come because the tent could only sleep a certain number.
The museum was free because my husband is a public safety officer
there so numbers weren't as important there. Hauling kids from the
museum to our home also limited the number to how many we could fit
in our two cars since we didn't get any other parent/volunteers who
were willing to stick around for the whole party and drive kids back
and forth. The overnight campout helped her decide to limit it to
girls, her decision, because we only had one tent. And then she had
to choose who she was going to invite. This was difficult, but she
chose her own list, for her own reasons. This made it much easier
for her to understand when others had parties to which she was not
invited. She made sure that others who weren't invited to her party
understood that she could only invite a limited number for this
party, that she couldn't invite everyone. She also made a point of
inviting others to do other things with us at other times.

For another birthday, recently, at age 15, she also had to limit the
number for a day of wonderful freebies she had collected with comps
and passes. The day included a trip to the museum to see a special
OmniMax film (Dad got comp tickets for everyone), free passes to ice
skate (she had earned these working at the ice rink), then a return
to our house to make individual personal pan pizzas (I made the dough
ahead of time and provided the cake pans for each person's pizza, but
she organized all the topping ingredients). At the house she also
planned to do henna tattoos and chalk art on the backyard blacktop,
with music for dancing. This was a mixed group. Again, the
limitations were who could fit in our two cars to go between the
museum and the ice rink and our house, and who she wanted to have
attending who'd be willing to participate in these activities; who
would enjoy doing these things. A fun time was had by all, but it
was a limited group.

Back to my comment about damage that can be done in the home. At one
of my daughter's early teen parties she did invite a few more kids
since it was all at our house. Our house is small, but she invited
about 15 this time, including two girls she didn't know very well.
These two were large girls, who somehow ended up sitting on two of my
antique wooden chairs, chairs that had long supported my oversize
poundage without a problem, but for reasons unknown these two girls
utterly destroyed these antiques and family heirlooms. I mean they
were crushed, broken, shattered in multiple places. One was a
Windsor arm chair in cherry and the other was a bent oak captain's
arm chair. Neither the girls nor their parents offered to pay for
the damage they caused, to help repair the chairs. We didn't ask
them to, either. They never even apologized. I guess they were
surprised, too, and embarassed. I was totally taken off guard, never
expecting anything like this.

At the same party something happened to our six month old DVD player
while the teens were attempting to watch a movie they had selected
and it went kaput! So that nice "at home" party ended up being a
very expensive party, especially on our limited income. It was
several years ago and we still haven't been able to repair those
chairs or replace that DVD player. Again my daughter learned some
important lessons about these kinds of decisions. So, yes, I feel
that parents should have a say. Not as a power/control issue, but as
the ones who must live with the consequences, or haul kids around in
our vehicles, or foot the bill for whatever the kids are doing.

On the other side of things my daughter experienced real exclusion
from the local homeschool community when a few moms planned a
homeschool prom, unbeknownst to us. We heard about this prom from
one of the girls who was planning to go and who innocently asked if
my daughter was going. She said, no, she didn't know anything about
it. The girl told her a little about it. I then posted something to
my e-list asking if anyone knew the details so everyone who might be
interested could know about this event. I didn't get any clear
response, but some interesting evasive answers.

Then one day at the ice rink (we spend a lot of time at the ice rink)
a mom showed up who doesn't usually show up there and she sat down
and talked to me for quite a while. Innocent enough, I thought, but
sort of a strange conversation. Next thing I know I get an email
from this mom informing me that "they" had decided that my daughter
could not attend the homeschool prom. Very interesting, because the
subject of the homeschool prom never came up in our conversation at
the ice rink. Truth is that my daughter already had plans to attend
three other formal dances at local high schools and could not have
attended another prom even if she had wanted to do so. But no one
had bothered to ask. Some moms just assumed that because I was
inquiring about the event that my daughter wanted to attend.

The bottom line on this was that even though my daughter could not
have attended, was attending another prom on the same night as this
homeschool prom, she was being intentionally and pointedly shunned
and excluded by fellow homeschoolers. Why? Never could get an
answer on that. The folks doing the shunning chose to spread lies
instead of answering my e-list query. Word got back to me, in the
form of an email, that I had already been told why by one of the
organizing moms in a phone call I had supposedly made to her in which
she told me that my daughter was not welcome and why, and in which
she alleged that I had argued with her and she had ultimately hung
up. Wow! If it had been in a court of law I would have demanded
phone records for her to prove those allegations, because there was
no phone call. None of this ever happened. But I learned to what
extent some folks will go to cover their exclusionary behavior.

So, why, you might ask, were these moms so determined to keep my
daughter away from this prom? My daughter is multi-racial. Her
father is black and I am Cherokee/French/Welsh/Irish. She is a
beautiful young woman, poised and well-behaved, a dedicated
competitive figure skater with 8 years of skating behind her, aiming
for the U. S. Nationals. I really don't know why she would be the
only homeschooler in our large metro area who was definitively
shunned and excluded from this homeschool prom, but I can guess, and
any of my guesses are not nice. But then racism and bigotry have
been around for a long time. Turns out that pretty girls from mixed
racial backgrounds are not so welcome when some moms start looking at
these girls as potential lifemates for their sons. Obviously these
moms haven't done much work in genetics or biology, let alone
morality. But whatever the cause, my daughter cried a little at
being so directly excluded, but went to her three proms and had a
great time.

So, yes, exclusion hurts, but I have never felt "left out" when it
was a birthday party. I figure that based on our own experiences
this type of party has so many built in limitations that it isn't a
big deal. Then there are other bigger issues out there, kinds of
exclusion involving race and economics that really do hurt and for
which we take the time to work through how we can best handle
interfaces with other people's self-imposed limitations.

Norma

Julie Stauffer

<<You can come inside today but he can not>>

We used to go through this with a neighbor who only had one female child.
The mom liked her dd to play with my oldest dd who is quiet and oh so
feminine but shuddered every time she saw my younger son coming up her walk.
The mom took his rambunctiousness as being poorly behaved and frankly he got
on her nerves. Anytime the boys wanted to be included, they weren't allowed
to play in these peoples' home. It got yucky but I talked to Zach about
different people having different comfort levels and made sure he found some
friends whose parents actually loved him.

But we have also been on the other side of the fence. Little neighbor girl
that my dd did not like whatsoever. Parents were determined that our girls
be friends. Kept sending dd over to play and my dd would beg me to answer
the door and make excuses. Little girl would try to barge in. I finally
talked with the mom as gently as I could but all I got was grief because
Adriane didn't invite the little girl to her birthday party. I refused to
make Adriane not be the star of her own birthday and didn't force Adriane to
invite the little girl. It got ugly with the little girl yelling things out
her door at Adriane.

Adriane only wanted the right to choose her own friends.

(Not saying this is what is happening with the other kids being discussed at
all)

Julie